I live in New Delhi, in the Lodhi Estate/Lodhi Gardens/Rabindra Nagar/Khan Market/Golf Links/Pandara Road area, where every stray dog has a name and is cared for by one or the other of the several animal lovers living here. Lately I and many others have noticed that suddenly new dogs are beginning to appear from nowhere. What is curious is that these dogs have been recently sterilized as can be seen by their shaved flanks. If they were runaways they would still be wearing identification tags (as has happened in the past), which they are not. This fact leads us to believe that rather than returning sterilized dogs to their original place of habitat as the law specifies, NGOs are deliberately dumping them here and perhaps in other areas as well. Incidentally, the dumping is done late at night when there are no witnesses!
As anyone who has any knowledge of dog behaviour should know, dogs are territorial and will not allow dogs from other areas into their territory without a fight. As a result, these poor displaced animals are having a hard time of it, frightened, starved, thirsty, badly mauled, covered in maggot wounds, they run from one hiding place to another, across busy roads, at great risk from traffic. Try as we may, it’s hard to help these new dogs because they don’t stay in one place, attacked and chased away as they are. Many of them must die cruel deaths due to the negligence and don’t-care attitude of NGOs that release dogs where convenient and not where they should be released.
For the sake of these dogs, for their safety, I would request AWBI to kindly investigate this contravention of the ABC Rules to ascertain which NGOs are falling down on their job, breaking the law in the process. Dumping dogs like this is extreme cruelty, causing the animals great distress and harm, and those who are doing it should be pulled up, even prosecuted.
Hiranmay Karlekar